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Friday, 30 April 2010

As promised - here's a tutorial to make your own sparkly raincloud brooch!

I made mine in two different colourways, one white cloud with pale blue raindrops and one darker, stormy grey cloud with dark blue raindrops:

To make your own clouds you will need:

- a needle, a pin, scissors, and the template at the bottom of this post
- white or grey felt to make the cloud and blue felt to make the raindrops
- thread to match the two colours you choose
- embroidery thread to match your raindrops
- a large needle to sew the embroidery thread
- silver and blue round sequins
- a brooch clasp or safety pin

First, cut out your pattern pieces using the templates provided. Each piece of the brooch is made from a "sandwich" of three felt layers, the middle layer is the smallest so it's hidden when you sew them all together.

Using embroidery thread, sew your small raindrop pieces to your small cloud piece (this structure will be the filling in your sandwich). Knot your thread and make one stitch in one of the raindrops, starting from the bottom and sewing upwards. Then leave a bit of embroidery thread "loose" between your raindrop and cloud so the raindrop can dangle freely, and sew it securely to the cloud. Repeat this for your other two raindrops, hanging your middle drop slightly lower than the others.

Now it's time to add your sequins onto the "front" felt pieces. I used silver sequins on my white/light blue cloud and a mix of silver and blue sequins on my grey/dark blue cloud. You might find it helpful to arrange the sequins on one cloud shape or your paper pattern as a guide and then gradually transfer them to the final shape as you sew. Use three stitches for each sequin, and thread that matches the felt you're sewing them onto.

Take your remaining cloud shape, turn it over and sew a brooch clasp onto the back using a double thickness of matching thread (alternatively you can use a safety pin and a scrap of felt - for info on how to do this please see this post).

Using thread that matches your cloud, sew the back piece (with clasp) onto the middle piece. I used long stitches on the inside (which won't be visible when the brooch is finished) and shorter stitches on the outside (visible on the back of the brooch)

Now it's sandwich-making time. Start with your raindrops - they can be a bit fiddly! Use a couple of small stitches to secure the small middle piece to the plain back piece (as you just did with the cloud), this will make it much easier to sew all three pieces together neatly. Then then add the sequinned front piece to your sandwich and use whip stitch to sew all three layers together. Finish your stitches on the back where they will be less visible.

Finally, put your sequinned cloud shape in place and use whip stitch to sew your cloud sandwich together (again, use matching thread and finish on the back).

Double-click on the image below to view the template & print it. If you print the template at 100% your raincloud will be the same size as mine.

This tutorial is for non commercial use only: you can use it for as many brooches as you like for yourself or as gifts for friends but please don't make any for sale. Please feel free to borrow photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial on your site. Thanks!

I added this project to our site and linked to you. We think it's a great project our readers will love to make! If you have other projects you'd like us to feature please feel free to contact me. Thanks again,

These brooches are so cute and simple to make. Adorable!Thanks for sharing the tutorial, I linked it in a serie I'm writing for my blog (http://rock-n-roll-stops-the-traffic.blogspot.it/2012/04/diy-from-head-to-toe-7.html), hope you don't mind :)

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Feel free to borrow a photo or two if you're blogging / Pinning / etc my projects but don't repost the tutorials or any templates or patterns. Please always credit me and link back to my blog. Thanks xx

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